Day 105: Pandemic and us

Ajangaon, July 2020 07/07/2020 Day 105 This morning we went beyond the little hillock on which the road climbs up immediately, from the coffee point where we sit during rides. It is a short ramp, about a kilometer long. It then descends into an expansive flat land until the next low rise hill range in … Continue reading Day 105: Pandemic and us →

Aligarh’s cavalry14th Murray’s Jat Lancers was raised here. 120 sowars or cavalrymen made the cavalry regiment raised in Aligarh in 1857. These men and the horses were drawn from the region. I begin to imagine these cavalrymen on the roads of Aligarh today. The men, as sharp featured as now and horses of the finest … Continue reading →

Reading Pirsig on road trips

It was a ride to Ooty in the monsoon of 2013. Being no good with dates, the ride registers a clear memory because Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZAMM) by Pirsig was in the bag. At the breakfast table, hundred kilometers down on the road to Mysore, ZAMM was making partial sense. Details … Continue reading Reading Pirsig on road trips →

Motorcycle, Touring & Things In-Between – 1

Last evening while reading a book on social theory, I drifted away when a chapter in it opened with a mention of the maverick sociologist C. Wright Mills (dude wrote the legendary essay on Sociological Imagination). What made me remember him is not his ideas or contribution to social theory but the fact that he used … Continue reading Motorcycle, Touring & Things In-Between – 1 →